Phnom Penh

We didn’t enjoy Cambodia’s capital, we got a cheap slow bus with lots of locals who offered us food (especially these cool small packages made of bamboo leaves which contained rice in coconut juice and beans) we also went with a Vietnamese couple who we met at our guesthouse in Siem Reap, they were lovely and we stayed at a nice(ish) riverside area guesthouse with them. We didn’t ever get to the backpacker area of the town, but what we saw we didn’t like, there was the strip of riverside that was really touristy – relatively expensive restaurants and internet cafes with Westerners inside, and then the surrounding streets which were very busy with lots of street stalls selling various things and lots and lots of barbers cutting hair by the roadside, but there were also piles and piles of rubbish everywhere. We’ve smelt some bad things, but walking down some of those streets was so revolting. It drew our attention once again to the lack on understanding the people have about their environment. It makes sense really because when they country has struggled through such hardships and is still so poor, I suppose the environment doesn’t really seem like an important issue. But it was so sad to see, even in the rural areas, people just throwing rubbish into the street, or worse, people eating food out of plastic bags (in SE asia everything is eaten out of a plastic bags – rice, soup, drinks…) in boats and then dropping the bag overboard. Its such a pity that such a beautiful country is getting spoilt so quickly.
Anyway, we did visit the museum which was lovely and situated in a very well-kept area along with the Royal Palace and independence monument and other important buildings situated on open boulevards with grassy parks which people fly kites in and have picnics. It was a very strange contrast to the people living in shacks in the nearby market and families sleeping rough by the river. We took a tuk tuk out to visit the killing fields, it was so harrowing. Probably the most shocking thing we have seen in all of our travels. The first thing you see is a huge monument, must be about 100ft tall which is packed with hundreds of human skulls which were found in the pits. The scale of the killing was terrifying. As we started walking through the fields we could see pieces of bone and lots and lots of clothes sticking out through the soil as not all of the site ha been excavated yet. It was so disturbing as it only happened 30 years ago and it was awful to see bits of Khymer scarves poking out as everywhere you go in Cambodia the people have their scarves around their necks, on their heads, tying up baskets or hats. I was going to buy a scarf as a useful souvenir, but after that I couldn’t look at them without thinking of all the people in those pits. We learnt how the Khymer Rouge (mostly made of boys aged under 15) poured DDT onto the heaps of bodies so that local people wouldn’t smell the stench and to kill those who were buried alive, they also had a magic tree’whefre they hung a loudspeaker which played sounds to drown out the wailing of the people. If that wasn’t sad enough we then visited the Tuol Sleng Museum (S21), which was a former school that the Khymer Rouge used as a torture chamber. It was so harrowing seeing the photos of all the poor ordinary people who died there and then worse, seeing the vile tortures they were put through and the photos they then took of them dead. We walked through the torture rooms where the last victims were found and then saw the tiny cells where the people being questioned were kept. I have to say I knew nothing about the rule of Pol Pot and the Kymer Rouge before I visited Cambodia. But learnt that the Khymer Rouge led by Pol Pot were mainly little boys who first scared all of the people out of the cities (Phnom Penh was deserted for decades) and then tried to kill anyone who had any sort of intelligence or education and favoured the people from the countryside who could work the land. They then put the whole country into slave labour and tried to make everyone s illiterate and unknowing as possible. It must have been an awful time to live in and it seemed like the rest of the world did nothing to help. Theres still lots of landmines and victims of the war and of the landmines left and its all so sad.

There were parts of Cambodia that we really loved, but it’s such a difficult country and once we had got our Vietnamese visas back, we left straight away. I would like to go back and see more of the country one day, but not for a while, it was too sad!